“The Wolves of Savin Hill” is John Beaton Hill’s exploration into the internal world of people who have suppressed their feelings and emotions about a pivotal event in their childhood. During a conversation with the writer and director, ShockYa was able to learn more about the film’s experiment with psychology as well as a real life event that mirrors an event in the film.
Hill said that “The Wolves of Savin Hill” originated from helping his friends. “Some friends of mine wanted to shoot some scenes for their acting reel. I was working on a screenplay that was inspired by “Point Blank”…it’s a brilliant movie and I was very inspired by the editing structure…So we started to talk about characters and things of that nature,” he said. “…[W]e talked about some of the characters I was working on when shooting scenes…and I went off for about nine months and wrote the screenplay, which was originally called ‘Days Full of Night.’
Hill said that the original title didn’t give the right vibe he wanted for the film, so while many ideas were thrown about, the winning title was inspired by one of the film’s actors.
“The look of the lead actor had a wolf [type] of presence, and the idea is that it took place in Boston, in Savin Hill,” said Hill. “Actually, Shawn Ireland–one of the producers–said this would be a great title, to call it ‘The Wolves of Savin Hill’.”
John Boorman’s 1967 film “Point Blank” was a big jumping-off point for Hill, but if you watch the film, you can see other inspirations at play as well. “The nature of the film in itself, the story, was inspired by ‘Point Blank’ and ultimately by Steven Soderbergh’s ‘The Lymie,” said Hill. “There were a few things I wanted in this movie. I wanted to use a structure in which we could use certain material, which was home movies, to give us a fingerprint and DNA of these characters, that they’re from a [different] time and place. The other element was to shoot [the backstory] back east. There’s one area where I grew up outside of Boston in Milton, Mass., and the adjacent town, Quincy, had these quarries, which were very spectacular.”
Hill also discussed a real life inspiration, something that happened in the New England area many years ago. “There was an event that happened years ago, in 1975, about Martha Moxley…really disturbing. This girl, Martha, who was murdered…basically with a six-iron, she was bludgeoned to death. So that’s where that comes up in the movie, that connection.”
Initially, no one was charged with Moxley’s murder; 2002 is when Michael Christopher Shakel, who was 15 at the time of the murder, was finally convicted. The irresolution of a case like this and its psychological effects are explored in Hill’s film. “There’s something about people getting away with something that I don’t know how to describe,” he said.
Analyzing the psychological minefields of his characters is something Hill found great fun in. “That’s something I really wanted to shoot for…being able to explore the internal world of these characters, so to speak,” he said. “I’m interested in exploring the characters, and in this case, the dark natures of the choices that we make, that [they’ve] become complicit in this event that affects them as adults…[and] the people around them in several different ways. That inability to face and confront something and address it, [with] that kind of morality and psychology…it’s almost a sickness, so to speak.”
“The Wolves of Savin Hill” had its first screening at the San Diego Film Festival. The film stars David Cooley and Brian Scannell and follows two friends whose lives have diverged ever since a life-altering discovery in their childhoods.
